


devil like me

by freefallvertigo



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, BAMF Martha Jones, BAMF Yaz, Blood and Injury, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Smut, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, Yaz & Martha kill vampires and hook up its hot x, hunter!yaz, vampire!13
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:22:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27608270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freefallvertigo/pseuds/freefallvertigo
Summary: Yasmin Khan has spent the better part of a decade hunting down the captivating monster she believes to be responsible for her parents' senseless deaths, indiscriminately disposing of whichever nocturnal creatures are reckless enough to cross her path or stand in the way of her brutal brand of justice.However, as she is soon to learn, Jesper is a vampire like no other. She's older, stronger, and infinitely more complex. Who will come out on top when unstoppable force meets immovable object is anybody's guess, but one thing is for certain.When the red sun sets, there will be blood.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 5
Kudos: 36





	devil like me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi everyone so please heed the tags/archive warnings for this fic bc there will be graphic violence throughout, starting with this chapter!
> 
> i hope ur all staying safe. enjoy! x

Memories change over time.

Yaz knows that. 

She understands that the more you revisit a memory, the further from truth the details stray. Were they holding your left hand or your right? Smiling with their teeth or just their eyes? Did they really hug you so tight, or do you just wish they had? A mind struggling to remember will fill in the blanks and filter the memory with the sunny lens of sweet nostalgia. So it goes, those most cherished memories eventually become lies. Fabrications. You can’t trust them anymore, which is to say, you can’t trust yourself.

As some memories change, others fade away. Time erodes the timbre of once familiar voices, the exact contortion of lines around somebody’s eyes when they laugh heartily; the true hue of their doting eyes. For Yaz, this comes as an especially great loss. 

There are so few pictures of her parents, and even fewer videos. Yaz only knows their voices through the static of grainy homemade footage shot with a lousy camcorder. She only knows their warm smiles through pixelated images taken just a step too far away. Any memories she has, she can’t depend on. She’s gone back to them too many times. They’re wrong. They’re all wrong. 

There is only one memory Yaz thought would never succumb to the wrecking ball of passing years.

The night she found them.

She recalls it to be a dry, cold night. A howling wind has been raging through the Sheffield streets for hours and hours. Yaz and her sister, whom she shared a bedroom with at the time, are but nine and seven years old respectively. After staying up late swapping horror stories in weak torchlight beneath Yaz’s sheets, they fall asleep side by side. For fear of the dark and the monsters within, Sonya never makes it back to her own bed. 

A knock on the front door sometime later stirs Yaz. She rubs her sleepy eyes and checks the time on her alarm clock. 22:48. 

Orange light seeping past the sill of her door tells her that her parents are still up. She hears her mum’s lighter footsteps crossing the living room towards the door, and then the squeal of a rusty hinge when she pulls it open. A quiet, amiable exchange of voices — one familiar, one not — leaves Yaz no reason to fear. Her mother chuckles and Yaz feels a mild tug at her own lips. To the tune of her sister’s gentle snoring, she drifts soundly to sleep once more. 

Half an hour later, a loud crash yanks Yaz and Sonya from slumber. They both jolt upright and cling to one another in the dark. Somewhere in their flat, somebody has left a window open. The wind screams like a wounded cat. 

“What was that?” trembles Sonya. They both are staring at their bedroom door. Outside, the lights have gone off. 

Some part of Yaz is tempted to call out for her mother and father, but her own intuition intimidates her out of it. It’s as though that open window is letting in not just the wind, but a harrowing dread. A notion: _there’s something out there._

Yaz shivers. 

The notion, alas, is not quite enough to frighten Yaz into hiding beneath her covers. She holds a finger to her lips to encourage Sonya’s silence, and then peels the sheets back. Her socked feet land soundlessly on the wooden floor. Yaz is halfway to the door when she hears her sister scramble, with far less stealth, after her. She hurries across the floorboards and grabs Yaz’s arm with both hands as if in an effort to channel her bravery. Yaz gives her a nod, and then reaches for the door handle. 

Their hallway is a pitch dark maw which yawns over their heads and stretches at either side. Sonya’s grip on Yaz’s arm tightens when they walk willingly into it. Though they both are moving shakily, and Yaz’s tiny heart is beating as frenziedly as a feral baby bird, intrigue ushers them on. 

From the open doorway of their parents’ bedroom at the end of the hall, inside which the wailing wind beckons, white moonlight spills across the carpet. 

Yaz and Sonya hold their breaths when a shadow passes, briefly, over it. They watch and wait and don’t make a sound, but perhaps it was just a cloud or a bird, for it doesn’t happen again. They exchange nervous glances and press on. One step, two steps, three. One more push and they’ll be there. Yaz reaches for Sonya’s clammy hand and clamps down, hoping beyond reason that all they’ll find is their parents sleeping deeply. She releases a shuddering breath, and then they both take the final step together. 

Thus far, the memory remains unaltered. 

Yaz and Sonya are woken late at night by a loud noise, and then they both go to investigate. Okay. No quarrels with that. 

After they peer into the darkness of their parents’ room, however, two versions of history branch off and contradict one another. Both life-alteringly horrifying; one, slightly more so. In the initial version of events, one which both sisters lived with for the better part of a decade, they cross the threshold of the bedroom to find their parents in bed. 

The window is open, the black sky is clear, and ghastly pale moonlight illuminates every dark splatter of blood along white walls, cream sheets, and slick floors. It looks as if somebody has dipped a brush into a bucket of red paint and lashed it with giddy abandon around the room, or else it looks like the scene of a massacre. And yet there is nobody there except her parents — silently snoozing. The knocked over lamp with its shattered bulb is the only other thing out of place. 

Yaz steps into something warm and wet with a stomach turning squelch. When she looks down, her fluffy yellow socks are drenched in blood. Paint? No, it’s definitely blood. 

It’s funny — ludicrous, really — that her first thought should be how annoyed her mum is going to be when she finds out she’s ruined her socks. The fear is there and, in some ways, the realisation of what they’ve just walked into, but her young mind doesn’t want to know. It doesn’t want to believe there are fates any worse than her parents’ vexation. She’s in for a rude awakening. 

In this version of events, Yaz makes her way to her father’s side of the bed with leaden feet and quivering bones. Sonya is stuck in the doorway. Frozen. Voiceless. Terrified. 

Upon later reflection, they both will remark that there is one narrow spot in the room — right beside the window — which they both refuse to look at, like something awful and unknowable is lurking in their periphery and neither of them dare to turn and behold its monstrous face. But surely they would have known, wouldn’t they? If there was somebody else in the room with them, they would have known. They must have. 

Yaz’s hands are shaking violently when she pinches the corner of the duvet and drags it back, laying her parents’ upper bodies bare. Exposed to her too-young eyes are the lifeless corpses of her mother and father: skin alarmingly desaturated of colour, lips blue, clothes and skin torn, throats ravaged as if by a wild animal, and eyes open but unseeing for now and evermore. Yaz can see bone and dark muscle. She can see things she doesn’t know to name, except to say that they make her sick to her stomach even to this day. 

She cries out and staggers away, slipping on a pool of blood and landing harshly on her back. A girl of nine, she lies there beside her butchered parents, sodden from head to toe with their black blood and choking on the taste of iron and death. 

This next part of the memory never made much sense to either of them. Suddenly, Sonya has a phone in her hand. It’s the landline telephone, which she only could have gotten from the stand in the living room or the counter in the kitchen that she isn’t yet tall enough to reach. And besides, she doesn’t move. The phone appears in her hands, but neither of them remember her moving. She calls 999, and she helps Yaz to her feet, and they huddle together in the hallway while they wait for help. 

And that’s it. That‘s how they remember it for nine years. 

A number of things always bothered Yaz about this particular account. First, the part of the room that looks like shadow when she tries to recall it. Like a vague nothing. Like that small, precise piece of reality simply doesn’t exist in this memory. 

Second, the phone. Sonya didn’t move. Yaz knows she didn’t move and Sonya knows she didn’t move, so where did the phone come from? 

The third thing that bugs Yaz is their reaction. Where were the screams? Where was the running and hiding? Rather than search the flat, they presumed they were safe and waited out in the open for whatever vicious beast that killed their parents to come back and finish the job. That isn’t how children react. That isn’t how Yaz would react. She’s sure. 

Finally, the window.

Neither Yaz nor Sonya remember closing it. However, by the time the police arrive, it’s firmly shut. Technically possible from the outside, but the flat is several floors above the ground. 

It all ends up being blamed on shock and trauma. Every confused aspect of their story; every hazy retelling. _It’s just shock. You went through a lot. Don’t worry about it._ But Yaz has always felt that there is a distinct wrongness to her own recollection, and it’s the same wrongness she felt when she awoke in that flat and felt the nearby presence of another. 

Still, without a valid alternative explanation to offer up, she’s left with no choice but to accept what she’s told. Granted, that isn’t very much. 

How did they die?

_Must have been an animal._

What kind of animal? 

_Couldn’t say._

How did it get in?

_We don’t know._

How did it get out?

_We don’t know._

Will it come back? 

_Don’t worry about it._

Yaz never once believes an animal killed her parents. When she found them, they were in bed with the sheets pulled over their bodies. Animals don’t tuck their prey into bed after they’ve mauled them. Animals don’t turn to smoke and walk through walls. Nothing else does either. What can she do, then, except carry the unbearable burden of never knowing with her for the rest of her life? 

Years go by. Yaz and Sonya move in with their Nani and shoulder their trauma like a bag of bricks. It’s backbreaking work just to make it from one day to the next, and yet Yaz refuses to unload a single one of her bricks. She clings to them. Obsesses over them. 

It’s easier for her to get hung up on the mystery of it all than it is to deal with the actual fact of her parents’ death. Easier to treat it like a riddle to solve and not a great personal tragedy. She compartmentalises her grief and sets it aside for another day, when she might finally be ready to face it head on. That day never comes. Sonya cries. She feels the full weight of her loss and then sets down some of the bricks on her back. Yaz carries them for her. 

Yaz sees the way everybody worries about her. The counsellors she’s forced to see as a child tell her she’s growing cold and aloof as a defence mechanism, which Yaz thinks is probably true. She just doesn’t care. Her sister screams at her; begs her to show a single emotion other than rage. Her Nani tries to console her but she reminds Yaz so much of her mother that it hurts to hold her gaze for too long. 

She comes to regret all the times she turns away her Nani’s embraces when she falls ill. Yaz is eighteen when it happens. She and Sonya spend weeks taking care of her, but they both know what’s coming. Yaz is holding her Nani’s hand in a draughty, generic hospital room when she dies. 

The last thing she ever says to Yaz is, “You have to come back to yourself now. You have to be there for your sister, because I won’t be around anymore. Protect her, Yasmin. She needs you. Promise me.”

The last thing Yaz ever says to her Nani is, “I promise. I’ll protect her.”

She flatlines ten minutes later. 

Later that night, Sonya sobs in Yaz’s arms on the kitchen floor. Yaz holds her close and strokes her hair and coos into her ear, but she still doesn’t cry. Her Nani’s death is another thing to compartmentalise; to deal with when the right time arises. But that’s not good enough for Sonya.

“Why don’t you ever fucking cry?” she screams hoarsely after some time. She pushes away from Yaz and gets to her feet, so Yaz does the same. “You don’t feel anything! You don’t react to anything! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I’m dealing with it in my own way, Sonya,” says Yaz. She’s so calm. It’s unnerving even to herself. 

Sonya sniffles and shakes her head. “But you’re not! You’re not dealing with anything. Everyone’s _gone_ , Yaz. Everyone we had is gone! You must have a heart of fucking stone.”

“But I don’t. That’s the problem, Son. I love Nani just as much as you do. I just…. I just need time.”

“Time?” Sonya scoffs. “We’re out of time, Yaz. Do you even understand what this means? You’re eighteen, and I’m not. Which means either you’ve gotta pull your shit together and look after me, or they’ll take me away. And then we’ll really be alone, Yaz. But you probably wouldn’t shed a tear for me either, would you? You probably wouldn’t give a shit!”

“That’s not true,” insists Yaz. “I’m gonna look after you, Sonya. I promise. Nothing’s gonna happen to you, okay? No one’s gonna take you away from me.”

“But you’re not even here!” Frustrated, Sonya grabs a glass of water from the kitchen counter and hurls it at the wall. It explodes into a hundred fragments. “Look at you, you don’t even flinch! I want my sister back, Yaz. I want her back, ‘cause I’m all alone right now. Do you hear me? I’m all alone!”

Yaz takes a step forward with a feeble consolation on the tip of her tongue. Her socked foot lands in the puddle of water running across the tiles and she stops; looks down. Yaz’s heart pumps ice through her veins. It isn’t water she’s standing in, but blood. She looks up and suddenly she’s not in her Nani’s kitchen anymore. She’s in her parents’ old bedroom, and the walls are oozing with dark matter. The clock rewinds, history folds in on itself, and now she’s remembering it all differently. 

A younger Yaz and Sonya are standing in the entrance to the room where it happened. 

This time, it isn’t empty. 

Standing right there, in that one corner of the room they were never able to perceive before, is a woman. Silver-lined in the moonlight, her slender body towers over her parents’ bed and she pulls the covers over them with deep regret weighing on her confusingly lovely features. Tucked into her dark trousers is a button-up shirt Yaz supposes was once white. Now, it’s a dripping, grotesque crimson. The top few buttons are undone. Around her neck cling a few dainty silver necklaces and more drying blood. It doesn’t look like it belongs to her. As far as Yaz can see, there isn’t a scratch on her.

She whispers a muted apology to their parents and runs a ringed, crimson hand through her straight blonde hair. There’s something striking about this stranger. A preternatural beauty which, somehow, only adds to the horror of the scene. She slips her hands into her black slacks and drops her head. Ashamed? Repentant? 

Sonya gasps and the stranger whips her head around with a snarl, baring bestial fangs to the sisters in a hostile display which sends them both falling backwards into the door. But as soon as her glowing eyes land, the woman’s face drops and her fangs retract. 

“Oh,” she breathes, looking between both them and their parents with dawning realisation and, if Yaz isn’t mistaken, guilt. “Oh, no.”

“Sonya, run!” screams Yaz. 

They both turn to do just that. Impossibly, the moment they do, the stranger appears as if by magic in the doorway with a gust of wind that rustles their hair. Driven by total terror, they scramble backwards. 

“It’s all right,” says the stranger. The killer. The creature. She takes a slow step towards them with her palms bared. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

Yaz looks sideways at her parents’ bed with tears glossing her eyes. “‘Mum? Dad?”

There’s something wrong with their faces. Yaz can tell even in the dark. She rushes towards her father’s side of the bed.

“No, I wouldn’t do that if I—“

Yaz tears the cover from their bodies. Pale skin. Dead eyes. Ravaged throats. Blood, blood, muscle, bone, and blood. Yaz cries out and stumbles backwards. She slips on a puddle of blood and lands on her back.

“Shit,” the stranger curses. 

Next thing, she’s crouching between Sonya and Yaz with a hand on both their shoulders. Yaz is about to scream, when a mollifying voice in her head steals the cry from her throat. 

_Don’t scream. Don’t run. Stay right here._

Neither of them scream. Neither of them run. They stay right where they are — Sonya trembling by the door and Yaz lying on her back — while the stranger glides out of the room. Her boots don’t make a sound. Her clothes don’t rustle. She’s silent as a ghost when she vanishes into the hallway. 

Yaz wills and wills herself to move. She’s never known fear like this in her life, and her parents… god, her parents. But she can’t even twitch so much as a finger. She thinks she’s going to die, and she doesn’t understand. She doesn’t understand any of it. It’s beyond terrifying. It’s paralysing. 

Seconds later, the woman returns with the landline telephone in her hands. She wipes down the phone with a silk handkerchief retrieved from her pocket and hands it to Sonya. 

Helpless, Yaz watches the stranger crouch in front of her sister and wrap a pale hand around her wrist. “You’re okay. No one’s gonna hurt you. I promise,” she assures her, and her register is impossibly soft. Gentle. She doesn’t sound like a murderer. “I need you to dial 999 for me, okay? Tell them there’s been an accident.”

Sonya’s eyes glaze over as if in a trance. While she calls the police, the woman turns on Yaz — who still can’t move. 

“Poor thing, listen to your heart,” she mumbles, and that only scares Yaz even more. How can she hear her heart? The stranger lifts a hand to Yaz’s cheek and Yaz finds herself transfixed by one of her rings: a heavy silver affair with a red jewel on the surface and indecipherable engravings along the band. With a palm pressed to Yaz’s cheek, the stranger offers a melancholy smile. Yaz feels a presence inside her skull and it envelops her all at once in a wave of perplexing tranquility. “I won’t hurt you. You’re safe. Take your sister and wait in the hallway. Help’s on its way.”

The stranger helps Yaz to her feet and Yaz lets her. She doesn’t know why she isn’t running for her life, or why she suddenly trusts this monster, but she does. She trusts that she’s safe with her. 

Yaz leads her sister to the hallway and they slump against the wall. Yaz should be scared. She isn’t. While the distant blare of sirens encroaches upon their flat, the stranger kneels in front of them.

“Look at me,” she whispers, and they do. Her golden-brown eyes are unnaturally luminous in the half light — like a wild hound caught in the beam of a torch. Yaz notices a tear slipping down her cheek. “I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. I tried to stop this from happenin’, I really did. But I failed. And now you’re gonna have to pay the price.”

“I want my mum and dad,” whimpers Sonya.

“I know you do, darlin’. I know.” The creature clenches her jaw and averts her glassy eyes. “Just know I take no pleasure in this.”

“Are you gonna kill us?” asks Yaz. It’s peculiar, though, that the question doesn’t come from a place of fear. If the stranger is to say yes, Yaz knows she still won’t be afraid, but she can’t fathom why.

The woman regards Yaz with untold remorse. There’s so much agony swirling in the depths of her irises. “No.” 

Yaz glances at their joined hands. Her skin is unnervingly cold. “What are you?”

“I’m nothin’. I’m nobody.” Her hold on their hands tightens and then she’s inside their heads again. “As soon as I leave, you’re gonna forget you ever saw me. You walked into your parents’ room, and there was nobody there. You found them. You called the police. You waited for them to arrive. That’s it. You understand?”

Both girls nod. 

The woman swallows tightly. “You’re too young for this to stick. One day, when you’re older, you’re gonna remember me again. When you do…” She sighs. “Just know I’m gonna do my best to make this right. You go on livin’ your lives. Don’t let what happened here take your future from you too. Too much has been lost today.” 

“Did… did you kill mum and dad?” whispers Yaz. Her voice breaks halfway through. Their fear might have been taken, but their hearts are shattered all the same. 

“That’s not gonna matter to you. When you remember this, it’s not gonna matter one bit,” laments the stranger. “Neither are my apologies. But I _am_ sorry. You have no idea. This never should have happened to you.”

Yaz squeezes her hand. She isn’t sure why she does it, but the gesture earns her a bewildered look. “What’s your name?”

There’s a heavy knock on the door and the police announce themselves. The stranger rises to her feet and casts a final, doleful look towards the sisters. “My name is Jesper, and I’m terribly sorry to have met you, Yaz. With any luck, you’ll never see me again.”

“How do you know my—“

“One more thing,” she interrupts, and there’s a sudden, sub-zero threat to her tone. “Don’t come lookin’ for me. Not ever. Any ideas you might have about vengeance or justice, forget ‘em. I’m not somebody you want to make an enemy of. I’m not always like this — I’m not always so merciful. The truth is, I’m a monster, and sometimes I act like it. I don’t know who I’ll be in ten years’ time. I don’t know who I’ll be tomorrow, so consider this your fair warnin’. Stay away from me.”

The door slams open. Yaz and Sonya whip their heads around to find a uniformed officer barging inside. By the time they look back, Jesper has vanished; with her, the memory that she ever existed. 

When Yaz gasps back to the present, she’s kneeling on the kitchen floor with her head in her hands and a splitting headache like a spear driven straight through both her ears. Sonya is saying her name over and over again, but the only thing Yaz can hear is the decade of repressed hatred bubbling in her blood and the honey-sweet voice of her parents’ slaughterer. 

“I know who killed them,” she says, breathless. “I know who killed mum and dad.”

Sonya thinks she’s lost her mind when she explains what she remembers. A fanged woman? Mind control? She’s finally cracked. She must have. 

Undeterred, Yaz goes straight to the police and gives an amended statement. They all look at her like she’s lost her mind. An animal killed her parents, doesn’t she know? No one woman could have done that. When she mentions Jesper’s wicked sharp teeth and the forced amnesia, they all but laugh her out of the precinct. 

Yaz goes home and slams her fist into bedroom wall until it’s bloody and raw, screaming with such primal anger that her throat burns with it, and she doesn’t stop until Sonya barrels in and drags her away. 

“I’m not crazy!” screams Yaz. “I’m not fucking crazy!”

“Okay. Okay,” Sonya croons. She wraps Yaz into her arms and holds her until she stops shaking, but Yaz knows she doesn’t believe her. Yaz can’t blame her. She wouldn’t believe herself either; it makes no sense and she knows it. 

But, at the same time, it makes far more sense than the story they were fed as children. It fills in the gaps. It smooths out the creases. A creature of the night taking their parents’ lives is, in some ways, a more palatable explanation. It gives her someone to blame. It gives her somewhere to channel her inexhaustible fury. 

Yaz goes down a dark and lonely rabbit hole. She spends endless hours researching vampires and all the lore surrounding them, dismissive of her sister’s increasing concern for her wellbeing. She forgets to eat and sleep and bathe. She loses her job. They’re surviving on the last of the money left to them by their Nani, but there’s only a matter of time before their funds run out. Yaz is in danger of breaking the promise she made, but two glowing, golden eyes haunt her every moment — waking or otherwise — and drive her to the verge of insanity. There has to be someone out there who can help her. There _has_ to. 

The worst part about all of it is that she’s bearing it alone. Nobody believes her, and it makes her wonder if she really is going mad. 

Has her grief finally caught up with her? Is she destined for a padded cell or a short dive off an overpass? Most of the believers she encounters on online chat rooms and dedicated forums don’t exactly inspire an air of confidence in her own sanity either: mum’s-basement dwellers and _Twilight_ superfans and creeps and freaks and loners. They hold a mirror up to herself, and she can’t stand what she sees. But she’s not one of them. Is she? 

It’s just a few weeks before her nineteenth birthday — not that Yaz even remembers — and Yaz is lying in bed, staring at the ceiling with bloodshot eyes. Another fruitless day of tearing through books and staring at screens. She’s beginning to understand: they’re right about her. They’re all right to laugh and worry and shake their heads. She’s succumbing to a delusion. A story. This is rock bottom. 

It’s time to get back up. 

Her sister needs her to return to reality. She needs to take care of the only family she has left before she loses the last thing on Earth that matters to her, and for what? A hallucination that snarls at her in her nightmares and whose pale, flawless complexion she picks out in crowds of perfect strangers. 

Just as she’s resigning herself to the truth of her instability, her bedroom door creaks open. Sonya is standing in the doorway with tears streaming down her face. 

“Sonya?” Yaz is across the room in a heartbeat. She puts her hands on Sonya’s shoulders and frowns at her. “What’s wrong?”

With a trembling jaw, Sonya lifts her eyes to Yaz’s. “I remember,” she croaks.

“What?”

“I remember everything. You’re not crazy, Yaz. You’re not crazy.”

Yaz’s eyes go wide. “I’m not?”

“No,” Sonya sobs. “You’re not.”

Yaz’s hands slip from Sonya’s shoulders and she takes a dazed step back, locking her fingers together atop her head. “Fuck.”

“She killed them. That fucking — that freak. She killed them!”

“I know, Son. That’s what I’ve been tryna tell you.”

“I can’t believe it. How is this… I mean, how is this possible?” Sonya wipes her tears and then fidgets with her damp sleeve. “I don’t understand.”

“Me neither,” admits Yaz. “For all my bloody research, I’m no closer to findin’ the truth.”

“What do we do now? Where do we go from here? No one’s ever gonna believe us, Yaz. They’ll just keep calling us crazy. What the hell are we supposed to do with this?”

Yaz frowns. “ _We_ don’t do anythin’. This is dangerous, Sonya. I don’t want you having any part of it.”

“But — but you have a plan?”

Yaz pauses. “Not much of one. Studying ‘em clearly isn’t workin’, so… I thought I’d just do this the old fashioned way. Look for her myself. I mean, how hard can it be to make a few stakes and hit the streets? She’s bound to show up eventually.”

“What? Yaz, that’s totally deranged. She’s a vampire!”

“And what’s the alternative? She gets away with it? No chance,” refuses Yaz. “Look, I’ve learned about a hundred different ways to protect yourself from vampires. And a hundred more ways to kill ‘em. Some of ‘em have gotta be accurate.” 

“You’ll get yourself killed! No. Absolutely not. You’re not doing this. I am _not_ losing you too,” Sonya asserts. “Look, I’m good with computers, right? Been teaching myself to code since I were little, and I’m good at getting into things I’m not supposed to. I mean, I’m always hacking the school system to give myself better grades.”

“You what?”

“Never mind that. What I’m saying is that maybe you can’t find what you’re looking for because you’re looking in the wrong places. Give me a chance. Maybe I can find what we need.”

Yaz sighs. “I dunno…”

“What have you got to lose? This way is much safer, and it means you don’t have to go out there and risk your life for nothing. Just give me some time. Please. That’s all I’m asking. I just need a little time.”

So Yaz gives Sonya time. 

She gives her a lot of time. 

Days become weeks become months. Now and again, it seems that Sonya might be getting closer to finding someone with answers. She’ll occasionally stumble upon a server on the dark web that looks more legitimate than anything Yaz ever came across. However, broaching the users proves an impossible task. The second she tries to interact with them, they shut the whole thing down and, presumably, relocate their network. They talk in code she can’t crack and they encrypt all of their messages. 

Even when Sonya is successful in decrypting them, they make no sense. Whoever they’re dealing with, they’re extremely careful about how and with whom they communicate. Yaz finds herself losing hope and patience. It’s a constant conveyor belt of dead end after dead end; they’re getting nowhere. Vampires might have all the time in the world, but Yaz doesn’t. 

One day, she decides that enough is enough. It’s time to do things her way.

Sonya will only worry, so she makes her preparations in secret. She carves up her own wooden stakes, hides a crucifix necklace beneath her shirt, and spends an embarrassing amount of time creating her own holy water — the steps of which are ridiculous and, she feels, perhaps not entirely effective. But it’s the best she can manage. 

Then, armed with her stake and a silver butter knife from her Nani’s things, she hits the streets while Sonya sleeps. She doesn’t really know what she’s expecting, or what she’s even supposed to be doing, so she just… walks. 

Night after night, she haunts her city from its shadows and watches its dwellers from alleyways and street corners and perches. She even sneaks into the local cemeteries, though she’s chased away by the groundskeepers on more than one occasion. Any suspicious characters, she follows. Nine times out of ten, there’s nothing actually shady about them aside from the fact that they’re walking alone at night or trailing behind someone at an uneasy distance. She manages to stop someone from getting mugged one time — but only narrowly avoids getting hurt herself. 

Still, she keeps on walking. She walks and walks and walks; she walks so much she feels she’s wearing a path in the tarmac and the sidewalks and the cobbles. Nothing ever happens. No monsters come out to play. Once, Yaz even goes so far as to cut herself — just a small gash above her elbow. She hopes the smell of fresh blood will draw in any nearby bloodsuckers. 

No takers. 

Yaz begins to wonder if they’re all out there watching her: pointing, sniggering, mocking. Making a fool of her. This is the thought that never fails to reignite the anger that fuels her. Wherever they’re hiding, she will find them, and she’ll leave a trail of bodies in her wake until she gets to Jesper. This, she swears.

She swears it aloud one night, to the moon. Yaz has been patrolling her city to no avail for over a year. It’s a mild night, and as uneventful as ever, when she finds herself on the middle of a bridge overlooking the train tracks below. The city centre is a short distance away. Here, it’s dead quiet but for the murmuring of the trees lining the tracks. Yaz leans over the railing, turning her stake over in her hands, and gazes up at the moon. The same one that witnessed her parents’ murder. 

“I’ll find her,” she whispers. “I will. If it takes me a lifetime, I will find her, and I will kill her. I owe it to you.”

“Kill who?” comes a faintly amused voice from behind. 

Yaz whirls on the spot and lifts her stake reflexively. The microscopic part of her that is expecting to find Jesper is at once vastly disappointed and inexplicably relieved to find that it isn’t her. 

Instead, Yaz comes face to face with a woman who can only be a few years older than her. She’s got dark skin and straight, black hair pulled into a ponytail. A black tank top reveals toned arms, scarred in places, and an unusual tattoo on her left shoulder. But what draws Yaz’s eye is what’s hanging from her belt. Sheathed on one side is a silver dagger. On the other — though it’s concealed by a leather case — Yaz thinks she can make out the shape of a stake. 

She takes one look at Yaz and bursts out laughing. “What you gonna do with that thing?” she asks with an unmistakably London accent, nodding at her stake. “What, start a fire? Give someone a splinter?”

“I… what? No. I’m — it’s...”

“Pathetic, is what it is. Your girth’s all wrong. It’s too thin. Break like a twig as soon as you apply any pressure to it. Here, like this.” In two quick steps, the woman has advanced upon Yaz. Before Yaz can blink, she twists the stake out of her weak grip and snaps it in two in her hands, tossing the pieces over the side of the bridge with a distant clatter. “See? Weak. Like you.”

“Excuse me?” Yaz still doesn’t know what’s going on, but she has a feeling she’s not making a very good first impression. Which shouldn’t matter. Why does that matter? 

“I said you’re weak. You’re too soft.”

“Who the fuck—“

“I’ve noticed you. A lot. You’re out here almost every night, and it’s really starting to get on my nerves. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but you and your pointy sticks stand out like a sore thumb. If there _were_ any vamps around, they’d spot you coming from a mile off and either scarper away into the shadows or take your head clean off your body, which makes it really bloody difficult for the actual professionals to do their jobs. Do you understand?”

“Wait.” Yaz shakes her head, struggling to keep up. “So you’re — you’re a hunter?”

“I see you’re bright, too. Look, why don’t you go home, stick the telly on, have a cuppa? Leave the hunting to the hunters. Because right now, you’re in my way,” she says, stepping up to Yaz until their noses are almost touching, “and you won’t like what I do to people who get in my way.”

Yaz swallows, allowing the hunter to back her up against the railing. “I’m sorry. I’m not — it’s not intentional. I just — I’m lookin’ for someone Actually, maybe you can help.”

“No.”

“But—“

“I said no. You’re out of your depth, now go home before you get yourself killed.” She looks Yaz up and down darkly and Yaz fails to suppress a shiver. “Be a shame, wouldn’t it?”

“What?” 

“You’re too pretty to die young.” With that, the hunter winks at Yaz and peels away. 

Yaz gapes after her as she makes off across the bridge. But she’s been waiting too long to give up now. There’s her chance, and her chance is walking away. 

“Just wait!” Yaz calls, jogging after her. “Look, I’ve been doin’ my research and—“

“How do you kill a vampire?” the hunter asks as they cut a path through the trees. 

“With… with a stake?”

Unimpressed, the hunter shakes her head and marches on. 

“No, wait. Um. Wooden stakes. Silver. Uh, fire?” Yaz almost trips over a jutting root and swears under her breath. “And you can chop their heads off too, right?”

“Sure — _I_ could. You couldn’t,” she snipes. “What about the older vampires? The ones who’ve been alive for hundreds of years? Know what to do if you cross paths with one of those nasty buggers?”

“Isn’t it just the same for all of ‘em?”

By way of answer, the hunter puffs out her cheeks in exasperation. They emerge from the trees onto a quiet estate of low-rise flat blocks, and Yaz follows her towards a van parked across the street. The name of a plumbing company is stamped across the side. 

“You’re a plumber?” Yaz asks.

“No, I’m not a bloody plumber. It’s a cover. Makes me invisible.”

Yaz eyes her from head to toe. Her defined muscles, the self-assuredness with which she carries herself; the spark of rage and spirit in her black eyes that Yaz identifies with. “Don’t see how,” she murmurs. 

The hunter stops with her hand on the back door handle of her van. She shoots Yaz a wary, scrutinising look. “Why are you really out here every night? I’ve come across wannabes before. People looking for a little extra thrill. Danger junkies. That isn’t you, is it? You’re too dedicated. Too bloody stubborn. So what is it?”

“It’s... it’s my parents,” mutters Yaz. “They were killed by a vampire when I were a kid. Didn’t even remember seeing her ‘til a couple of years ago. She wiped my mind.”

“Yeah,” sighs the hunter. “Doesn’t stick with kids. Their brains aren’t developed enough.”

“There was blood everywhere. I mean _everywhere_. And their throats — god, they were torn to shreds. What does that take? How much of a sociopath do you have to be? My parents were good people. They were kind, and they were honest, and they loved me. And she took them from us because… why? ‘Cause she wanted a fucking snack?” Yaz bites a lip wobbling with her unquellable outrage and shrugs. “I can’t let her get away with it. She has to pay.”

“Listen — uh, what was your name?”

“Yaz.”

The hunter hesitates. “Martha,” she offers after a beat. “Listen, Yaz, your reasons are pretty noble, and I do get it. That molten anger you’re feeling? I get it. But the only one who’ll be paying if you somehow manage to track this bitch down is you. You’re not even remotely prepared. Do you know how old she is? Do you know where she’s from? There’s a high chance she doesn’t even live here. She was probably just passing through. That’s what a lot of them do. They just keep moving, and that’s the life of a hunter, too. Always on the move. No ties. No life. No nothing — except killing.”

Martha heaves open the back door of her van and steps aside, nodding towards it in an invitation for Yaz to take a look. Yaz approaches tentatively. 

She gets a shock when she discovers a whole arsenal in the van: crossbows, silver-tipped stakes, grenades, hand guns, petrol cans, daggers, and various other lethal-looking devices she can’t place. Martha untucks a gun Yaz didn’t know she was carrying from the waistband of her cargo pants and steps inside the van, ejecting the magazine and returning the weapon to its shelf on the wall. 

“Home,” Martha announces, spreading her arms and turning in a circle. She stops and looks down at Yaz. “Is this what you want your life to be, Yaz?”

Forcing herself to be braver than she feels, Yaz steps up into the van. “If that’s what it takes.”

Martha’s face is stony and inscrutable when she regards Yaz. “Nah,” she says at last. “You don’t have it. Besides, I don’t play well with others. If you’re looking for a babysitter, look elsewhere. I’m not your girl.”

She moves to brush past Yaz, but Yaz’s patience has been wearing thin for a long time. Finally, it snaps.

“Just stop!” 

She whirls around and grabs Martha by her wrist. Which, really, wasn’t very smart of her. The second her fingers close around her arm, Martha spins abruptly on her heels, yanks Yaz’s arm back, and slams her up against the wall chest-first. She twists her arm painfully and Yaz yelps. 

“Don’t piss me off, Yaz,” Martha growls into her ear. “I don’t make a habit of killing living people, but a little maiming never hurt anybody. Well. It never hurt me.”

“Please,” begs Yaz. “Look, you work alone. Fine. All I need is a little guidance. Just point me in the right direction. Give me a few tips. What do you have to lose by helpin’ me out? I’m losin’ my bloody mind walking in circles all the time. I’m gettin’ nowhere. I _need_ you.”

There’s a long delay, in which all Yaz knows is the hot breath on the back of her neck and the pain in her wrist, and then Martha starts to laugh. 

“What’s so funny?” Yaz demands. 

“Babe, I’m a total stranger. You saw that I was armed, followed me to the arsenal in my van, and now I’ve got you pinned against a wall full of guns, blades, and explosives. Instead of begging for mercy, you’re now asking for my help. I’m not sure if that makes you dumb, insane, or brave. Either way… well, you’ve got guts, I’ll give you that.” 

“Look, I reckon we’ve established I’m not a threat to you. D’you mind lettin’ go of me?”

Chuckling, Martha lets Yaz go and stands back. She leans against a metal gun locker and crosses her arms. 

Whilst shaking off her throbbing arm, Yaz turns to face her. “I’m not gonna stop whether you help me or not, but I probably will end up gettin’ myself killed without any help. I know you don’t care. You have no reason to, but I made a promise to someone that I won’t be able to keep if I end up dead.”

“What? You promised mum and dad you’d avenge them? Somehow, I don’t imagine they’ll care either way.”

“I swore I’d protect my sister. She needs me.”

Martha’s indifferent facade falters. She stands upright and her hands fall to her sides. “You’ve got family?” 

“Just her,” answers Yaz. “She’s all I have left.”

“Is she in this too?”

“I won’t let her do anythin’ dangerous, but yeah. She’s in it. She wants to find Jesper as much as I do. We were both there that night. We both saw it. Neither of us can walk away from that. We don’t have a choice.”

Deliberating, Martha holds onto the hilt of the dagger in her belt and drums her fingers against it. Yaz awaits her decision with bated breath. 

“The smart thing to do would be to let all this go,” advises Martha. “Just move on with your life.”

“What life? She took it from me, and now all I want is to take hers. I don’t care about anythin’ else. I don’t care about gettin’ a stable job and settlin’ down. I don’t _care_ about my future — I just wanna see her dead.”

Martha smiles down at her boots. “You definitely talk like a hunter.”

Lips pursed, Yaz moves closer. She halts only when Martha’s hold on her dagger tightens. “I’m not askin’ for a lot. If you just tell me what you know, then we can both be on our way. You’ll never have to see me again. I swear.”

“Is that right?” Martha asks, dubious. Her gaze catches on Yaz’s throat. Head tilted, she eliminates the space between them with a single stride and lifts a hand to Yaz’s neck. 

Yaz’s heart races but she doesn’t back away, tracking the movement of Martha’s hand when she trails a finger along the silver chain she’s wearing. Martha meets Yaz’s timid stare and smirks. So taken by the thrill eclipsing her eyes is she, Yaz doesn’t see it coming when Martha yanks the necklace from around her neck with a harsh tug. 

“First lesson,” begins Martha, holding up the crucifix and letting it swing like a pendulum between them, “these are useless. Come at a fang with one of these and you’ll end up eating it.”

Without warning, Martha starts to pat Yaz down. Her hands soon find the back pockets of her jeans and Yaz’s pulse jumps. With a knowing pop of her brow, Martha lifts Yaz’s small, homemade vial of holy water from her pocket. She examines it with a frown, unscrewing the cap and giving it a whiff.

“What is this?”

“It’s… holy water?”

“Yeah, I highly doubt that. Not if you made it yourself.” She tosses the bottle out of the van. “Anyway, the holy water thing’s a myth. Now, if you concentrate a bit of baby’s breath and stir a few drops into some water, that shit’ll do some damage. Burns their skin if they come into contact with it. Doesn’t last, but it gives you a window to drive your stake through the bastard.”

Yaz is on the verge of asking if she ought to be writing all of this down when Martha curls a hand around the back of her head and leans into her neck. She comes so close that Yaz seriously wonders about her exact intentions — maybe it _was_ a mistake to follow her into her van. In the end, all she does is smell her, though that alone seems like a gesture too intimate for a total stranger. 

“Yaz… why do you smell like garlic?” 

Colour suffuses Yaz’s cheeks. “Well — I thought — I didn’t know if—“

Martha draws back, but she doesn’t move her hand from Yaz’s head. “Babe. Be honest. Have you been rubbing garlic cloves on your skin?” 

“Uh.” Yaz clears her throat. “Maybe.”

“Great. You’ve just seasoned Nosferatu’s next meal.” Martha laughs at her expense and Yaz doesn’t know if she’s more humiliated at her shortcomings, enamoured by Martha’s expertise, or distracted by the fingers in her hair. “It’s a good thing you’re cute, Yaz. Not much else going for you, is there?”

“Oi.” Yaz pushes Martha away from her. “Have you got any idea how many contradictory theories there are out there? It’s impossible to separate truth from fiction.”

“Not if you’ve got me.”

Yaz pauses. “And do I? Have you?”

“Well, do you _want_ me, Yaz?” teases Martha. At Yaz’s blank expression, Martha rolls her eyes. She puts her hands on her hips and glances out of the open doorway of her van. “Okay, so here’s the thing. I’m gonna be in the city for another couple weeks making sure there are no survivors from the nest I just exterminated. You meet me on the bridge at six sharp every night. I teach, you listen. I patrol, you follow. I say jump, you’re already in the air. If you’re late, or if you’re reckless, or if you can’t follow instructions, you’re on your own. When the two weeks are up, I’m driving away from this city, and not only are you never seeing me again, but you’re never mentioning my name again. Do we have a deal?”

“Yes,” Yaz answers without hesitation. “Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much. You won’t regret it. Honestly.”

“Sure I won’t,” scoffs Martha. “Now Yaz?”

“Yeah?”

“Get the fuck out of my van.”

During the two weeks that follow, Martha proves herself a strict mentor — but Yaz learns a lot. Through the long nights, they stake out well-known haunts preferred by the dead for their easy access to the vulnerable: dingy dives and seedy clubs, parks thick with trees and shadow, cheap hotels which vampires needn’t be invited into in order to gain access. 

When dawn approaches, Martha takes Yaz back to her safe house — one of many scattered across the country and used communally by a vast network of hunters — and teaches her to build, maintain, and use effective weapons. This is interspersed with basic self-defence training, at which Yaz is initially abysmal. 

Upon discovering what Yaz has been up to for the past year, Sonya is rightfully enraged. Still, her anger dwindles when Yaz explains what came of it, and that she’s finally getting the instruction they desperately need. In fact, Sonya begs Yaz daily to let her come along with them. Yaz refuses. Martha promises to give them an in with the other hunters before she leaves, so Yaz designates it Sonya’s duty to interface with them and spread the word about Jesper. Surely, one of them must know _something_. 

It doesn’t quite work out like that in the end. 

Martha’s date of departure is less than two days away, and Yaz is quickly realising that she’s nowhere close to knowing all she needs to know. Though Martha doesn’t give away much of her past, Yaz gathers she’s been a hunter for a long time. It’s taken years for her to get to where she is now. Fourteen days is nothing. She needs more. 

Presently, Yaz and Martha are in the garage of the safe house. It’s barely morning, and Martha is berating her for her stance. To exemplify her point, she hooks her foot around Yaz’s leg and knocks her off her feet with irritating ease. No sooner does Yaz land on her back than Martha straddles her waist and pins her hands to the mat. 

“Now what?” asks Martha. While Yaz already feels overworked and exhausted, there isn’t so much as a bead of sweat on Martha’s skin. “What do you do now?”

“I don’t know,” groans Yaz. “Can we take a break?”

“There’s a vampire pinning you to the ground by your wrists. Your neck’s open wide. It’s leaning in.” Gradually, Martha lowers her face towards Yaz’s throat. Yaz’s chest is heaving while she watches Marth descend upon her. “Clock’s ticking, Yaz. You’re about to be made a meal of.”

A wayward strand of black hair, breaking free from Martha’s ponytail, tickles Yaz’s cheek. Martha licks her lips, and an idea occurs to her. 

Surging forwards, Yaz crashes her mouth into Martha’s. If she expects shock or some sort of delayed reaction, her expectations are subverted when Martha reciprocates with all the fervour of someone who’s been just itching for the opportunity. 

Yaz parts her lips for Martha’s keen tongue and sighs when she bites down. She waits for Martha to surrender her hold on her wrists in favour of cupping her face, relocates her own hands to Martha’s waist, and then flips her on her back. Martha grunts in surprise. Climbing rapidly on top of her, Yaz pins her hands to the floor at either side of her head. She radiates smug satisfaction. 

“Oh, you little…” 

“That’s how you do it, mate,” simpers Yaz. 

The muscles in Martha’s cheek flex with annoyance. “That won’t work in the field, Yaz. Not when you’re in actual danger. What _does_ work is the method I taught you. Need a reminder?”

In a blur, Martha slides her arms up, locks her feet around Yaz’s ankles, and surges her hips off the ground. Forcing her weight onto one side, she topples Yaz off her balance and has their roles reversed again in no time. This time, when she pins Yaz’s wrists down, her fingers dig into her flesh painfully. 

“This isn’t a bloody joke, Yaz. This is life and death,” Martha admonishes. 

“What’s a joke is you expecting me to be a master at all this in two weeks. It isn’t enough! There’s so much I still don’t know. And you could teach me. You could—“

“I already told you,” snaps Martha, “I’m not sticking around for you.”

“So don’t. Let us come with you,” Yaz implores. “You could help me and I could help you. Surely it’s better to have a team of three than a team of one.”

Martha stares at her. “You’d only slow me down.”

“Probably, yeah. At first. But if you just trained me to be like you, then eventually it’d pay off. I know it would. And about Sonya — I’ve been thinking. She’s wicked with computers. I bet you she could hack into all sorts of databases. Police, hospitals, that kinda thing. Wouldn't it make it so much easier to hunt if we could just follow the trail of carnage to our target? If we could read actual police reports and not just faulty newspaper articles, and get access to what isn’t released to the public? We could get our hands on autopsies, and crime scene accounts, and evidence. You said yourself that sometimes you travel all the way across the country to follow a lead only for it to end up a bust. What if you didn’t have to do that anymore?”

“What, did you rehearse a whole pitch before you came over here?” challenges Martha, but there’s a contemplative streak in her eyes and her voice lacks bite. 

“Just want you to know I’m serious about this.” Yaz looks down at where Martha’s legs straddle her hips. “And, y’know, it doesn't have to be just a tactical thing. ‘Cause I bet it gets lonely, doesn't it? Out there on your own all the time?”

“There’s a good reason I travel alone, babe,” argues Martha.

“I’m sure there is. But we’re not cold like them. We’re human beings, Martha. We _need_ people. We need connection, and we need conversation, and we need…” Slowly, Yaz bends one of her knees and slides her leg up the inside of Martha’s thigh. “We need physical touch.”

Dragging a lip between her teeth, Martha glances at Yaz’s leg. “I don’t do relationships.”

“Who said anythin’ about a relationship? You’re so tense, Martha.” Yaz drives her knee up between Martha’s thighs and the fingers clamped around her wrist squeeze harder. “I think you could use a bit of fun.”

“If I didn’t know you any better, Yaz,” Martha begins in a low, titillating tone, “I’d say it kind of looks like you’re using sex to manipulate me.”

“Well, you really don’t know me any better, do you? But you could definitely _get_ to know me.” Yaz lifts her head from the floor and dangles her lips dangerously close to Martha’s. They’re both looking one another in the mouth; a charged electricity rides the current of their mingling breath. “You use me, and I’ll use you. It could be great, couldn’t it?”

“Yaz…”

Yaz grazes her lips against Martha’s without really kissing her. “Just say yes.”

“You’d have to erase yourself,” whispers Martha. “Disappear. Leave all your belongings and all your friends behind. Sever every one of your ties.”

“Don’t have any.”

“You’ll never have a normal life again.”

“Don’t want one.”

Martha runs her tongue across her lower lip and Yaz can’t stop watching. “You’ll probably end up dead.”

“If Jesper’s bones are in the ground before mine, I don’t care.” Yaz nestles the side of her nose against Martha’s. “I know the risks; I know the price I’m payin’. It doesn’t matter to me. I _want_ this, Martha. What about you?”

A hard swallow constricts the muscles in Martha’s throat. “There’s a vampire pinning you to the ground.”

Yaz frowns. “Wh—“

“Your neck’s wide open,” Martha murmurs. She leans towards Yaz’s throat and presses her warm mouth to her skin. “What are you gonna do, Yaz?”

When the penny drops, Yaz grins. Utilising the very method Martha exhibited just moments prior, she knocks her off balance, pushes her to the side, and slams her to the floor. Martha’s smile is somewhere between mildly impressed and unabashedly lecherous when Yaz hovers just millimetres from her face. 

“I’m gonna make it scream.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> btw for anyone who's worried about yaz's age, there's gonna be a huge time skip in the next chap. i mean there's still gonna be like a massive age gap between yaz and jesper but whats new it'll be less than the show so!
> 
> anyway lemme know if u guys are interested in this bc i got tonnes of spicy ideas :-) thanks for reading x
> 
> find me on tumblr: freefallthirteen


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